2 Texas women sentenced for taking, hiding baby 8 years

Feb. 19, 2013
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Krystle Tanner, seen here in a March 12, 2012, booking photo, and her mother were convicted Tuesday of kidnapping Miguel Morin in 2004 when he was 8 months old and hiding him for eight years. / San Augustine Sheriff's Office/AP

by Michael Winter, USA TODAY

by Michael Winter, USA TODAY

An East Texas woman and her daughter were sentenced to prison Tuesday after being convicted of kidnapping a Houston boy when he was an infant and hiding him for eight years.

Jurors in San Augustine sentenced 51-year-old Gloria Walker to concurrent terms of 30 years for injury to a child and eight years for kidnapping. Her daughter, 27-year-old Krystle Tanner, received concurrent sentences of eight years for kidnapping and eight years for reckless injury to a child.

They were convicted earlier in the day for the 2004 abduction of Miguel Morin when he was was 8 months old.

Walker could have been sentenced to life in prison; Tanner faced a maximum 20 years.

Prosecutors said Tanner used to babysit the child and took him from his Houston apartment complex when he was 8 months old. She and Walker then renamed the boy Jaquan, moved around and kept him out of school to avoid being discovered.

Authorities began investigating Tanner in April 2010 after her newborn son tested positive for marijuana. She and her mother were arrested in March 2012.

Jurors rejected defense arguments that the boy's biological mother had actually sold him to Tanner or that it was a child-custody case, as a Houston police investigator testified.

Miguel has been placed with a Houston foster family that has taken care of his four siblings for nearly 10 years under an agreement with their parents.